The stifling sun is putting pressure on our region's power grid.
Orange and Rockland officials say they invest and work year-round
just for the busy summer season.
They say stretches
of high temperature are taxing on the power grid, and overheating can
run the risk of more outages.
Orange &
Rockland's control center, which runs the system,
works extremely close with engineers who triage how well it is running.
"We have
engineers working through the day and through the night monitoring the system
to make sure there's no overloads on the system," says Mike Donovan of
Orange & Rockland Utilities.
"Today we had a compliment of people in the field all day working
on immediate issues, in the morning it was the heat, in the afternoon it was
the storm," says Donovan
Preparation
includes building stronger poles, wires and using underground strategies
to keep the power grid running strong in extreme weather and temperatures.